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Archives for October 2009

Meeting Peggy Seeger

Marie-Louise Muir | 16:07 UK time, Thursday, 29 October 2009

I met Peggy Seeger today. This is the woman who's part of one of the world's leading folk song dynasties; her half brother is Pete Seeger, her brother was Mike Seeger. They are people who charted the upheaval of post war society in the US, who sang with Woody Guthrie and who inspired Bob Dylan. She answers her hotel room phone fast. She'll be right down. As I wait for the lift I wonder what I can ask her that will be new. And I suddenly feel as if I haven't lived life enough to merit talking to her.

Her birth cert says she's 75. But the woman who stepped out of the lift looked 20 years younger. And her attitude is young too. Check out her website. http://www.peggyseeger.com. Among the more familiar photos of her with Ewan MacColl her late husband, or with her favourite five string banjo or guitar, there's "a laugh out loud for the sheer joy of it" photo. Yes this icon of the folk tradition, the inspiration for the song "The first time ever I saw your face", the arranger of the legendary ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Ballads with MacColl and producer Charles Parker,Ìý is strapped to a nameless man having just jumped out of an airplane. She's skydiving, New Zealand in January of this year,Ìý she tells me. Although the ear to ear grin she has in the photo has more to with forgetting to close her mouth and with the wind rushing in she can't stop grinning. Next time, yes she wants to do it again, she says she'll close her mouth and not bring a photographer along! Although she brought the photographer along for her grandchildren. Look at your granny jumping out of a plane.

I'm quietly bowled over by her. She's so sure of herself and she's great company.even as the leaden grey skies of Belfast rain down on us. Yes she skydived, she says. I'm 75, no I wasn't scared. She was in the Crown Bar last night and loved it. I kind of wished I had been there.

She's moving back to England, next year she tells me when I stop recording. Near Oxford. Ruskin College Oxford holds an archive of hers and Ewan MacColl's work. And it's now there's a glimpse of her loss. They want her to lecture, but moving back will mean gigging the same towns and cities she travelled to with MacColl. And that's going to be hard. Then she shrugs. I don't say anything. I don't feel equipped to fill that vacuum.

I leave her with directions on how to get M&S and

Boots on Royal Avenue
.Ìý Even iconic folk singers need their high street fix.

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